Rustic natural palette at Coopers Beach

This New Zealand holiday home won the prestigious Residential Architecture award from the New Zealand Institute of Architects in 2008, with the judges commenting that the beach house “has an overall feeling of simple restraint. Modest materials used in deceptively simple ways manipulate site, space and light to organise the “bach” in a straightforward, playful and inventive way.” Designed by Dorrington Architects & Associates, the brief involved creating a large holiday home flexible enought for short and long term guests. Privacy from suburban neighbours was a key objective, as was opening the site up to the north and west, capturing and maximising view and sun. Designed with four zones, the house has a bedroom pavilion, a living pavilion, a garage and a linking corridor. The living pavilion sits separately to the north of the bedroom block and references a campsite in homage to the campground that occupied this area for many years. Two sides of the pavilion completely open up, evoking a sense of the casual living of a traditional Kiwi family camping holiday.

[Photography by Emma-Jane Hetherington]